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Goldman Sachs has reportedly scrubbed mentions of race from a company webpage and tweaked a program founded to invest in Black women, as Wall Street continues to back away from diversity, equity, and inclusion operations amid the Trump administration’s attempts to end such initiatives across the public and private sector.
The Wall Street giant eliminated uses of the word “Black” on a page about its One Million Black Women program, a $10.1 billion commitment to help close the racial wealth gap, and has refocused the program to cover low- and moderate-income populations in general, The Wall Street Journal reports.
As part of the change, lines in company materials about the program have been cut, including a section that once touted $39.4 million in philanthropy that the bank said was “laying the groundwork to impact the lives of over 300,000 Black women.”
Elsewhere, Goldman’s “Black in Business” education program now describes itself as a way to help business founders “stay in the black,” a term for being profitable. Company sites associated with the programs still feature photos of Black women, as well as links to research on subjects like “Black Womenomics.”
“We regularly evaluate our programs to ensure they are impactful, align with the firm’s strategy, and are compliant with the law,” a company spokesperson said in response to the paper’s reporting. It added that its One Million Black Women program “is one component of our longstanding commitment and broader strategy focused on advancing small businesses, job creation, and economic growth in rural and urban communities across America.”
In February, the bank said it would drop a quota requiring U.S. and European clients to appoint diverse board members as a condition of Goldman assisting in their initial public offerings.
The realignment began before Trump took office, however, with Black in Business opening to everyone after the 2023 Supreme Court ruling ended race-based affirmative action in college admissions.
The Trump administration has made eliminating diversity programs a major priority, instructing agencies to “combat illegal private-sector DEI preferences,” and suggesting federal contractors could lose business by engaging in diversity work.
Its allies have sounded a similar tone, with a group of 11 Republican attorneys general writing to major Wall Street firms in January, and accusing them of using illegal race-based preferences in hiring.
The financial world has clearly taken notice.
The day after Trump was inaugurated, Nasdaq pulled rules requiring companies listed on the exchange to disclose their diversity statistics, while Institutional Shareholder Services, which advises large investors, said in February it would cease considering diversity factors, explicitly citing the Trump administration’s stances.
That same month, a Morgan Stanley report omitted the bank's past statement that "a diverse and inclusive workforce is important to Morgan Stanley's continued success,” and instead featured the phrase "meritocracy is at the heart of Morgan Stanley's talent development.”
Major firms in other industries, including Meta and Amazon, also pulled back on diversity programs ahead of Trump’s inauguration.
At least 37 large publicly traded companies have made substantive changes to their diversity schemes, ranging from eliminating departments to ending supplier programs, according to a Bloomberg analysis.
Costco shareholders, meanwhile, rejected a proposal in January to evaluate potential risks of its diversity practices.
Conservative activists began pushing companies to ditch diversity efforts even before Trump took office, and 2024 saw a string of companies back away, including Walmart, John Deere, and Harley-Davidson.
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